I have just bought a late 95 850. It has an intermittant ABS warning light. The ABS when actually tested may or may not work, this is totally random and doesnt seem to matter if the ABS warning lamp is on or off. When i press the break pedal it has about 30% soft travel then it goes hard as you'd expect. On very very few occasions it seems as though the soft travel has dissapeared and that the resistance on the pedal is 'normal', possibly discounting air, leaks or old fluid. Sometimes when you press the break pedel under normal breaking the abs activates without it being needed. Once again it does'nt matter if the ABS warning lamp is on or off. It does not have module A or B and I do not have a fault code reader as yet to check out any codes. I know one of the rear sensors has been replaced. I have also removed the two front sensors. They were very dirty so I have cleaned them and the 'ring' but the problem still exists. All the messagages I have read indicate the ABS module (crack in the board) but no one has mentioned the brak pedal travel fault. I dont know if the two faults are connected. Does anyone have any experience or knoweledge of this. Thanks.

Darren

 

I have a feeling you have a bad ABS module.If the ABS is activated then the pedal might feel funny shortly after.

It is also possible you have a bad booster for the funny pedal feel.

 

Ok, an update to my post of last week. I read many other forums and it seemed that there was 3 possibilities causing the ABS light to come on intermittantly. The three things I constantly read about was the ignition switch being faulty. I tested this out by wiggling the key in the ignition while drivig, (carefully and on a clear road :-). The next thing was loose wires on the underside of the fuse box. I chose not to go with this option. The third and most reported cause was bad solder joints on the ABS controll module PCB where the plug socket is fitted. I went out and bout a £10 set of torx female sockets (T5 is needed and difficult to get hold of). I removed the module and and dismantled it to get to the PCB. This is fairly difficult and you do end up damaging the casing but as long as you use some tape after the repair it will be fine. I soldered all the pins where the socket is soldered onto the PCB. Re-fitted it and hey presto, 4 days since, the light has not yet come on. It seems that indeed it was a bad solder joint.

The other problem was the break pedal travel. This turned out to be air in the rear system, I flushed and bled the whole system and now its ok. Fortunately it was not the sevo assistor (Booster).

I nearly bought a replacement control module off of E-bay for £180 but im glad i gave the above a try and all it cost was a tenner (£10) for the torx sockets.

Good on the forums. Dont just read them, join and post your experiences to.

 

Thanks for the update glad you got it fixed.